On Mars' atmospheric sputtering after MAVEN first two years

François Leblanc (1) , Ronan Modolo (2) , Shannon M. Curry (3) , Janet Luhmann (3) , Robert Lillis (3) , Jean-Yves Chaufray (2) , Takuya Hara (3) , James P. Mcfadden (3) , Jasper S. Halekas (3) , Frank Eparvier (4) , D. Larsen (3) , J. Connerney (5) , Bruce Jakosky (4)

1 PLANETO - LATMOS
2 HELIOS - LATMOS
3 SSL - Space Sciences Laboratory [Berkeley]
4 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]
5 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Mars may have lost a significant part of its atmosphere into space along its history, in particular since the end of its internal dynamo, 4.1 Gyr ago. The sputtering of the atmosphere by precipitating planetary picked up ions accelerated by the solar wind is one of the processes that could have significantly contributed to this atmospheric escape. We here present a two years base analysis of MAVEN observation of the precipitating flux, in particular the dependency of the precipitating intensity with solar zenith angle and used this measurement to model the expected escape rate and exosphere induced by this precipitation.

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]; Astrophysique stellaire et solaire [astro-ph.SR]

François Leblanc, Ronan Modolo, Shannon M. Curry, Janet Luhmann, Robert Lillis, et al.. On Mars' atmospheric sputtering after MAVEN first two years. European Planetary Science Congress 2017, Sep 2017, Riga, Latvia. pp.EPSC2017-58. ⟨insu-01599004⟩